The Moondrop Saga
by Hybrid Tea
Summary: The usual: City Boy takes over farm, encounters hardships. Chapter 2 Grandpa is dead. Our protagonist contemplates... television?
1. Prologue

**THE MOONDROP SAGA**

**Prologue:**

Grandpa was dying. It had been a year-long battle with some mystery disease even the doctors in the city deemed incurable, and now, in the winter of my twenty-second year, it seemed the unconquerable illness was about to deal its final blow. Grandpa had long been incapacitated from the fighting; all he had the strength to do now was lie beneath the starched covers of his bed and wait for the life to leave him. The situation wasn't much different for my father and I: for the past several months we'd been making weekend trips to the countryside to tend to Grandpa, like good comrades-in-arms. There wasn't much we could do about the sickness ravaging his body, but we could at least be with him when the time came for the anticipated surrender.

Those were my thoughts as I marched up the winding path that led to Grandpa's farm, Moondrop. It was a bleak morning, four inches of snow on the ground and not one portent of the spring we wished would burst through the iron-grey cloud cover and rejuvenate the land. By "we," I mean my father and I – and I might as well include inhabitants of Flowerbud Village, the outskirts of which the Moondrop Farm was located. It was true that Dad and I, in all our preoccupation with Grandpa, never interacted much with the villagers (who probably cast us off as two of _those_ sort, the snooty city folks who came around every so often to demonstrate just how much better they were to the country bumpkin), but it was difficult to imagine anyone _not_ longing for spring, what with the protracted blizzards and incessant cold that penetrated even the woolliest of sweaters this season. Maybe it's because I've always been a warm-weather guy (winters back home were rarely very harsh); maybe it's because I'd driven up too many times from my grim metropolis only to encounter bleaker visions here – whatever the reason, as I pushed aside the gate to the Moondrop Farm and found myself looking out onto acres of infinite snowfields, I couldn't help but dispatch a little prayer to the Goddess: _Please let this end soon. The land needs to thaw._


	2. No Need for Bandages

**THE MOONDROP SAGA**

**1:**

**No Need for Bandages**

Grandpa's cabin stood only a short distance from the gate, but the path leading up to it was packed with snow. I tried to follow the footprints I'd left earlier, but they were mostly covered up by the powder drifting continuously across the fields towards this end of the farm, where they settled in mounds as high as my waist. When I finally got to the porch, panting and sweating and no longer feeling as though I had any right to complain about the cold, I found there was no need to knock. The racket I'd made falling into snowdrifts (strings of curses, primarily, although there was also the occasional surprised yelp) announced my presence, and Dad was waiting for me at the door.

"You'd think a grown man like you would opt for more civil language," he said, leaning against the frame. I was doubled over in front of him, hands clutching my knees for support. Dad only shot the ice crusting over my pant legs a disapproving look before slipping back into the half-gloom of the cabin. He left the door open. I guessed that meant I should follow him.

-----

From the glimpse I caught at the door, I could see that Dad's face was haggard and unshaven – not surprising, considering there was no mirror in the one-room cabin, and the only basin was being used to wash our hands of the ointments we applied to Grandpa's arm. (It's gruesome, how this illness inflames the body. It is.) What did seem strange to me, standing there on the porch, was the shadows under Dad's eyes. They sagged even more than when I'd left the cabin to run errands in the village, over four hours ago.

Since we started driving up to Flowerbud, Dad and I have taken turns watching over Grandpa. One of us would stay at the cabin for two or three hours, while the other was allowed to wander about the town and rest a bit (or, in my case, stock up on dwindling medical supplies) before coming back to take the following shift. On this particular morning, I was just returning from my break, wide awake and vigilant from the espresso shot I'd gulped down at the inn. I was an hour late, but no matter. Grandpa rarely needed attention this early in the morning; whoever on watch was free to nap or sip hot liquid from mugs as red light crept through the window and across the sun-washed floorboards of the cabin. It doesn't take very long to determine which of the two _I_ usually partook in -- I'd learned over the course of four years at the city college that I could get by just fine without a night's sleep. In fact, being a night owl, I often found I couldn't sleep even if I wanted to. But Dad functioned on a more conventional schedule, and I knew, from the countless all-nighters I'd pulled over a decade of co-habitation, that he was an unfailingly sound sleeper. Why then, the eyebags? Something must have happened while I was away, something that forced Dad to spring out of bed during a shift we considered just as relaxing for the person on watch as it was for person breaking. There was a heaviness in the air, too, that made me suspicious. I could feel it the second I set foot inside the cabin, and from there determined to find its source.

"Dad --" I began, but my father cut in with an inquiry about the weather. Strange; Dad was never one to interrupt. Then again, neither was I, and I wasn't about to start by following his example.

"It's still cold. There's lots of snow on the ground, and maybe a drift or two scattered around. You'd better be careful going out."

Dad chuckled. Did he find my response amusing, or was that an edge I sensed in his laughter?

"Well, that's to be expected, isn't it?" He faced away from me, looking particularly interested in the calendar tacked to the wall. It was turned to Summer, the month Grandpa lost his strength. "Did you get anything to eat, by the way? You looked famished when you left."

"Yeah, I grabbed a bite or two at the bakery." That reminded me: I'd gotten something for Dad, too. I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and withdrew an aluminum foil package. "Here, have some pie. This one's on the old lady who runs the place."

Dad turned around and lifted the foil off my hands. "It's still warm," he murmured. "Fresh baked. That old lady must work long hours."

"Actually, I think it's her granddaughter who does all the baking. The old lady – her name was Ellen, I think – she just sits there and makes small talk with the customers." It was true; Ellen was quite the chatterbox. Her granddaughter was quieter but had a strong presence for all her lack of words – to put it simply and honestly, she wasn't bad looking. (Trust me, though, when I say the whole of my attention was focused not on her, but on the day's first batch of cookies she was setting inside a glass case.)

Dad peeled back the foil and took a bite out of the golden crust underneath. Red stuff oozed out from the sides of the triangle. He chewed for a long time, while I pondered how best to bring up the topic of what transpired during my break. What in the world could I possibly say?

_Dad? What happened? _Unassuming as they were, these words felt unusually potent on my tongue: the question was on the verge of disrupting the stillness of the cabin like an atom bomb. All I needed to do was let it drop. But I didn't want to do _that_: the disruption might be too much for Grandpa in his deep slumber, Dad chewing slowly and methodically by the wall calendar, the new day blooming outside our window. I don't claim expertise when it comes to socialization, but I know enough that caution and tact are in utmost demand when it comes to handling situations like this. The bomb can only be dismantled at the opportune moment. Until then, I would just have to tread carefully to avoid setting off the unwanted explosion.

I found myself rummaging through my pocket for another package, this time of slightly crumpled, brown wrapping paper. I pulled it out and set it on a low table in the center of the room. Dad had ordered me to pick this up before I left. Since I wasn't about to do anything with the bomb, I might as well avoid it altogether.

"These are the bandages you wanted," I said. "I felt bad for bothering the old man at the medicine shop at the crack of dawn." I paused, remembering that awkward moment when the door first opened and I found myself peering into the droopy eyelids of what appeared to be a very groggy old man. "I forget how weird my sleep schedule is sometimes. Luckily, Medicine Man's a morning person and recovered quickly. He even recognized me and gave me a discount for Grandpa's sake. Here's the change."

I held out my palm, laden with the glittering remnants of last night's loan. They jingled, enticed Dad to look up from the empty shell of aluminum foil in his hands. I could see them with renewed clarity: the dark half-moons cradling a look in his eyes that told me he had been contemplating more than just his breakfast in the minutes following our last exchange. Like me, he had been straining to say something, something that so threatened the stillness of the cabin that he could not follow through with vocalizing it. We had been on the same wavelength all along. What the hell was I waiting for?

"Dad! Something up?" The words came out pushier than I'd intended, but we were getting somewhere. At least I thought so at first. After awhile I realized I wouldn't be getting much of a response from my father, who was now looking at me with those shadowed eyes – looking, but at the same time not, for it seemed he was focused on a completely different plane than the one we were currently standing on. Lost within the intricacies of his own mind. A world of which I could only scratch the surface.

"Dad? Is there something wrong?" This time, for reasons unknown – perhaps only a softer voice can ease a person back to earth – I successfully solicited a response. Dad's shoulders sank.

"Oh, Ren…"

And he crept over to Grandpa's bed. I'd hardly paid attention to it since getting back to the cabin – it just never occurred to me to think much about something that had not changed for the past three, four, five weeks. (Amazing, how negligent we become towards the constant.) I'd assumed Grandpa was sleeping, but with Dad's approach the realization dawned on me that that I had seen no rise and fall of the chest, heard no rattled breath or hacking cough that so often spurted from his lips since entering the room. Something settled inside me; I didn't know what it was, except that it was dark and very heavy. Like Dad's eyebags. Like the air hanging stagnant in the cabin. Like the body on white sheets in the far corner of the room, out of reach of the daylight falling through the window. The feeling, whatever it was, settled and curled itself up into a dense black ball in my stomach.

Slowly, very slowly, so as not to disturb the dead, Dad pulled the sheet over Grandpa's face.

"I'm afraid your effort was all for naught," he said. "Your grandfather has passed."


	3. Tomato For Your Thoughts? Part I

**THE MOONDROP SAGA**

**2:**

**Tomato For Your Thoughts?**

_**Part I**_

It's funny, how the focus of the human mind is often irrelevant to the situation at hand. You could be sitting at work, staring at a spreadsheet your boss ordered you to do… _something_ with, when all of a sudden your stomachs starts to growl, and you think, rather innocently, _Hey, I was in such a rush to get to work on time, I didn't even have breakfast this morning. _The next thing you know, spreadsheet and task are completely forgotten as you become fixated on the image of that succulent cheeseburger sizzling on the grill of the bistro kitchen across the street from your building. Not that you can even leave your office until after you'd suffered through those unbearable three hours before your next coffee break. Food, breakfast, stomach moans: they're hardly related to your work, but you think about them anyway, and every time you try to ground yourself and _focus_, your thoughts deviate instead to the taste of that delectable burger.

It might sound strange, but something similar happened to me that pale winter morning, standing there in the sunlight flooding through the door I didn't have the sense to press shut after stepping over the threshold.

First, there was the proclamation: _Your grandfather has passed_. No doubt about that: Grandpa lay lifeless in his white sheath, a lump like the snowmounds rolling in the fields outside the cabin. Then, there was heaviness that weighed me down, anchored me to the spot so I could neither obey the urge to back away from the scene (The air! The stagnant air! So stifling…!), nor move forward to put a hand on Dad's shoulder or carry out some other consolatory gesture I sensed I was obligated to make. This paralysis I initially attributed to the shock of the announcement, and thus I thought nothing of it until further into my contemplations; more specifically, during the next string of thoughts that compelled me to seriously doubt my own sanity.

Upon receiving news of a relative's death, a person in possession of normal emotional capacity might think back to the good times shared with the deceased, the visits to his farm during the summertime when the fields were blanketed not in snow but rows upon rows of crops and nodding yellow flowerheads. He would be overtaken with the poignancy of these memories, perhaps, and come crashing down to his knees, sobbing, overcome with nostalgia. Instead, my mind flashed back to the television serials I used to watch in my college years, when term papers were dull and I needed the entertainment.

-----

Prime time programming in the city generally falls into two categories: action-adventure series and the generic tearjerkers the girls at school always gossiped about the morning after a new episode. In the latter type of show, the hero or heroine came down with some terminal disease after the two finally declared their undying love for each other. The afflicted would collapse in the street on their way to work or school and wind up in the hospital, waking up just in time to hear the doctor's diagnosis: stage three cancer, or something of the like. The beloved magically appears at the bedside, and the rest of the episode is drowned in the couple's tears.

Pretty overdramatic stuff. But the girls loved it.

On the other hand, there was the hero of the action-adventure, who bore the death of his wife and children without so much as a quiver of the lips. Always stoic and solemn, his character better resembled a robot than the tragic hero with whom viewers were supposed to identify. A flood of emotion or complete absence of it; neither extreme adequately encompassed my experience, and that was what kept me preoccupied with these scripted scenarios of grieving: I was so familiar with them, they had become my reality. I _expected_ to see them acted out at someone's deathbed. But here I was, in the role of the bereft, and realizing I could not carry out either of these scripts because the emotional state they entailed simply did not coincide with my emotional limbo.

I couldn't say I was devastated to the point of turning on the waterworks, nor could I claim to be indifferent to the situation. One can argue that the hero of the action-adventure might have been putting on a façade, and that in actuality, his loss was eating him up inside. But I couldn't lay claim to that, either! I was not tortured. My heartstrings had not snapped; they were just a little frayed. And of course there was no television show in recent memory that told me what to do with this middle ground. This is how too much television can ruin you.

At a complete loss, I did the only thing I could do: I asked my father.

"Dad… _What should I do?_"

It was the first word I'd uttered since the bomb dropped.

Dad's hand still hovered over the bedsheet, as though it had been frozen in place by the icy breeze stealing through the open door. He raised it hand over his head and waved it once, as if to say, "Do what you want. It's all right by me." I'd known for some time now that I should have approached him, given him a pat on the back and said something comforting, something like "It's all right, Dad. We did the best we could." Or "It's all right, Dad. He's in a better place now. With Mother." See, there was a script for consoling others, too. But I wasn't better at following this one. In fact, I couldn't move from my little patch of sunlight by the door, and it wasn't the shock of the announcement that anchored me to the floor; it was, as I realized when my legs started shuffling toward the door the minute Dad gave his express permission, simple reluctance. One wave, and I did what I'd been wanting to do since Dad made his announcement: walk right out the open door, past the rotting fence posts that marked the boundary of the Moondrop Farm, and into the village now bustling with early morning activity. I set off down the cobblestoned main road, ignoring the uniformed man who attempted to greet me as we passed each other by the florist's, the girl from the bakery who stood outside with her grandmother now, arms laden with a platter of samples of what I assumed was a new kind of pastry. I directed my feet toward the Lilac Tavern and its shuttered windows, its empty front steps and sheets of dirty white paint peeling, bending back from the outer walls. There wouldn't be anyone there now, aside from the barkeep. Good. I could use some solitude.

-----

At home, back in the city, when there really wasn't anything on TV that could distract me from my term papers, I would skim whatever books I could find around the apartment – my mother's old psychology textbooks abandoned to collect dust on a bookshelf here, a coffee table there – and from this habit, I learned that people dealt with grief in all sorts of ways. It was a lesson I never internalized; every time I came across it, it was almost immediately forgotten the moment I turned on the television again. But it resurfaced now on my way to the tavern: _People dealt with grief in all sorts of ways._ Life can't be dictated by TV melodramas or fantastic action series. People dealt with grief in all sorts of ways, and me, I needed a drink.

-----

**AN: **Okay, so it's been awhile since I last updated. Many thanks to the reviewers who said some encouraging things while I was away. :) However, I have to say the I'm not quite happy with the way this fic is turning out – for one thing, it hardly resembles the original Moondrop Saga. The pace is too slow, it's been two chapters and nothing interesting has happened yet (unless excess introversion happens to be your thing), and I feel there's something lacking in the writing style. That being said, I'm willing to give this a chance and will hopefully introduce some of the Harvest Moon characters – namely Elli and Karen – and have them interact with the protagonist within the next few chapters. That'll breathe some life into this thing. Stay tuned!


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